For 22 years, Jerry Fischer has been instrumental in organizing the International Film Festival of Eastern Connecticut presented by the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut.

But this year, his work won’t be just behind the scenes. It will be on the big screen as well.

Fischer has produced the documentary “Harvesting Stones: The Jewish Farmers of Eastern Connecticut.” It delves into the history of the Jewish refugees who came to the region and became farmers, helped by the wealthy Baron Maurice de Hirsch in the late 1800s and then by the various funds and societies that were his legacy.

Fischer, who is executive director of the Jewish Federation, has been working on the project for 14 years. The movie will have its premiere Tuesday at the Garde Arts Center in New London as part of the International Film Festival.

“It took a long time, no doubt, but it’s almost like more and more ingredients made it a better and better movie. And I just kept discovering new ingredients,” says Fischer, who co-directed with Frank Borres and co-wrote with Borres and Carolyn Christman.

Originally, Fischer wanted a dramatic end for the movie, but he went instead with something said by descendant Eva Lowe, whose family settled on a farm in Hampton, because it reflected the whole saga explored in “Harvesting Stones.”

“She said, ‘I love America. I can’t tell you how much I’m happy that my mother ended up here.’ What I want people to get out of (the movie) is that we were a country that did welcome refugees, either from pogroms or after World War II,” Fischer says. “We weren’t so good in between World War I and World War II — and that’s the Dillingham Commission report and the paranoia — but I want people to get the idea that our country became great in part because we’re a country entirely of immigrants.”

And that “plays right into the discussions we’re having now, and the fears are almost echoes of the fears of previous anti-immigrant (efforts),” he says.

A devoted benefactor

This particular story began with De Hirsch, a Jewish philanthropist from Germany who lived from 1831 to 1896. As told in Fischer’s documentary, it was during his work with the Ottoman Empire, creating a railroad from the Near East to Europe, that he recognized the dire plight fellow Jews faced in Russia at the time. The documentary recalls de Hirsch’s words:

“I shall try to make for them a new home in different lands where, as free farmers on their own soil, they can make themselves useful to the country. My own personal experience has led me to recognize that the Jews have a very good ability in agriculture. And my effort shall show that the Jews have not lost the agricultural qualities that their forefathers possessed.”

His endowment toward that end, of $10 million originally and $30 million later, was the largest philanthropic gift to that time.

“Harvesting Stones” tells the stories of some Jewish farmers who settled in eastern Connecticut. Meyer Himmelstein’s family, for instance, escaped Russia to become the “Jewish pioneers of Lebanon, Connecticut.”

Rena Linder of Colchester recalls her father, Sam Friedman, immigrated to the U.S. from Russia after soldiers took his oldest brother away in the middle of the night to serve in the army. His younger brothers fled to America. Through Baron de Hirsch, her father was able to farm in Colchester, which, the documentary notes, grew to be the largest Jewish farming community in Connecticut.

After Baron de Hirsch died, his fund continued to help Jews resettle on farmland, and a subsidiary, the Jewish Agricultural Society, provided those farmers with training and assistance.

One of the families to benefit was the Gawendos. Jacob Gawendo and his wife Ray, both Holocaust survivors, immigrated to the United States in 1948. Their son Evert recalls in an interview this week with The Day, “Dad was working in sweat shops in New York, and he heard about this program. They decided to go for it.”

The society co-signed at the bank and gave the Gawendos a little stake to help them get started. The couple settled on their farm in Moosup, where they worked hard and started a family. They hoped that their children would go to college, and they did; Evert got a degree in civil engineering and now has his own construction company.

“My parents became productive members of America,” he says. “They lived their dream, and they were able to be successful and raise their family. After the horrors they had been through (in the Holocaust), to start over and get that opportunity was very important to them. That was a big deal.”

And he and his mother, Ray, now 101, will attend the premiere screening of “Harvesting Stones.”

“She’s looking forward it,” Evert says.

Turning to eggs

“Harvesting Stones,” by the way, takes its name from a noteworthy aspect of the farmers’ history: The rocky soil in eastern Connecticut wasn’t particularly good for supporting dairy farming, so the farmers turned their focus to egg production.

“That was a brilliant thing. It was, like, ‘We’re going to make it work somehow,’” Fischer says.

In addition to the Jewish farmers of eastern Connecticut and their descendants, “Harvesting Stones” also features interviews with Robert Morgenthau, the longtime Manhattan district attorney, and with Richard Blumenthal, the former Connecticut attorney general who is now a U.S. senator.

“Both of these men had such deep historical backgrounds. It was fascinating,” Fischer says.

The idea for the film grew out of Fischer’s work, in a way. The Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut ran two clubs for senior citizens, one in Norwich and one in New London. Lynda Stolz, who was the federation’s director of senior and community services, suggested that Fischer meet some of the people who attended the club’s kosher hot lunch program in Norwich and who were farmers. That piqued Fischer’s interest, and, over time, he ended up meeting more and more people whose families had been among the de Hirsch-financed farmers.

“I felt like I had uncovered something,” he says.

Fischer had previously done a documentary about Italians in New London and had helped someone else do a film on Jews in New London.

“So I felt like I was ready,” he says.

He pitched the project to CPTV, who wrote him letters of support, Fischer says, although it hasn’t committed to airing the finished product.

People at CPTV put him in touch with American View Productions and its CEO, Frank Borres, a film and TV producer who used to be a journalist.

“I thought it was a fascinating storyline, one I had no idea about,” co-director Borres says.

In working on the project, he says, he was struck by the ingenuity of the farmers — not only in their shift to chicken farming after contending with the rocky soil, but also their establishment of Catskills-type lodges where city residents could get away and enjoy the entertainment.

Fischer says a distributor in Los Angeles is interested in “Harvesting Stones” and has submitted it to the Jerusalem International Film Festival.

Fischer finally wrapped up his 14 years of work on the movie, but he references a quote from a French poet that “‘you never finish a poem — you just let it go.’ That’s how I feel. That’s probably why I’m really looking forward to writing a book, because there’s so much more that would work in storytelling in a book but wouldn’t work in storytelling in a movie.”

Searching for a narrator

Fischer says that the CPTV folks with whom he spoke about “Harvesting Stones” encouraged him to use actor Richard Dreyfuss as the narrator.

“So I called him up and I discovered that these guys have to work for Actors’ Equity rates, which obviously we couldn’t afford,” Fischer says. “So then Dr. (David) Bingham was friends with Sam Waterston, the actor from ‘Law & Order’ in the early (years). Sam Waterston encouraged me a lot, but he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to narrate, and he also said he would have to charge Actors’ Equity rates.

“So then I called up, believe it or not, Leonard Nimoy. And Leonard Nimoy agreed, but he would not be onscreen, so he agreed to just do the voiceover. Then I called up Ed Asner, and he agreed. But with all these people, it was insanely expensive.”

He says he then thought of the woman who grew up in the New London house where the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut is now located. Peninnah Manchester Schram is a renowned Jewish storyteller. She ended up narrating the film.

“It just actually seemed perfect. She was in our movie about Jews in New London, and her father was a rabbi here in town but also went up to the farms to kosher slaughter all of the chickens... So she is really invested in the movie, and she loved it,” Fischer says.

If you go

What: Premiere of "Harvesting Stones: The Jewish Farmers of Eastern Connecticut"

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 17

Where: Garde Arts Center, 325 State St., New London

How much: $10

Info: (860) 442-8062 or visit the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut's Facebook page